Foggy Kitchen

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

I got a delivery today, a Styrofoam box wrapped in plastic. I love getting things in the mail (or UPS or Fed Ex or whatever), but wasn't expecting any deliveries. The things I get delivered are mainly things I have ordered myself. So, this was a surprise.

Peeling off the plastic, I opened the box. Inside were steaks from the Omaha Steak company packed in dry ice. Four filet mignons! Yummy! I am one of the trustees of 2 different scholarship foundations. All the funds are invested, and the man handling most of those investments sent me the steaks as a gift. I guess that's what happens when you let someone invest over $1,000,000 for you.

The instructions inside the package said to put the steaks in the freezer, but not to put the dry ice in there, or the refrigerator either. Okay...so then where do I put it? The bag of dry ice was ripped already, so I figured I would just dump it in the sink.

Now, I don't know much about dry ice, though I did see a CSI show where someone was killed with dry ice fumes. I didn't want to let it just sit in the sink, so I thought I should melt the ice. How does one melt ice? You run water over it, which I did. Hot water too, after all hot water makes ice melt faster, right? Well....

First of all, I should have noticed that stopper had been placed in the sink. Apparently someone had been cleaning dishes earlier.

As the hot water filled the sink, the dry ice started gurgling...bubbling....making a very strange noise to say the least. Then the fog appeared. It boiled out of the sink and started spreading over the kitchen counter. The fog also poured down the cabinets and started rolling across the floor. It looked like a cheesy horror flick in our office kitchen/library.

My employees came in and looked at the mess I had caused. They laughed as I was standing in the fog of my own creation. Dad came into the kitchen with a look of extreme worry on his face. I'm sure he was thinking..."Jeff...what have you done?!?!". I told him about the dry ice and kinda looked at me as if I was crazy.

All this while the ice was still gurgling in the sink, like a witch's brew in a big black cauldron. It didn't appear that the fog was hurting anything, so I went back to my office. Everyone else went back to what they were doing as well. After a while, the ice burned up...or melted...or evaporated... or whatever dry ice does. It was gone, and the water was calm, and nothing (thankfully) was damaged.

Next time I'll know NOT what to do when I get dry ice in the mail. But I do have some good ideas for next Halloween.